Tuesday, March 19, 2019

Sir James Bevan is a bit right and a bit wrong.

BBC News reports: He wants to see wasting water become "as socially unacceptable as blowing smoke in the face of a baby. We all need to use less water", he is expected to say at a London conference.Two points:1. Global warming will mean that the climate of the British Isles will get wetter, not drier.2. The probability of occasional lengthy summer droughts will increase.3. It is in the interest of shareholders of the privatised water industry that people use less water.Okay, that's three points but the last was politics rather than climate science.Bevan is right to say that we need more reservoirs. Resilience to droughts is useful and will allow us to continue enjoying water features in our gardens.Bevan is wrong to say "We need water wastage to be as socially unacceptable as blowing smoke in the face of a baby or throwing your plastic bags into the sea."Over the coming decades we need to spend far more on drainage and flood protection than we need to spend on water supply.

Swindon, Town Gardens.

Oh, and another thing, water is never wasted. It goes round and round in the water cycle, rain, flow, sloshing about, evaporation, rain... with a built in purification by distillation every time round. Global warming drives the cycle faster and we need to adapt to that.